Tag: Jonathan Yardley

“Himmler was the complete opposite of a faceless functionary,” Peter Longerich writes in “Heinrich Himmler.” “The position he built up over the years can instead be described as an extreme example of the almost total personalization of political power.”

Beijing in summer 2008 was in the whirl of pre-Olympics madness, and Tom Scocca’s “Beijing Welcomes You” recounts the absurdities and peculiarities of an ancient city caught between its past and its future as the capital of an emerging global power.